On the morning of the nineteenth of March, they thank the water.

Dogo Onsen, Matsuyama, the oldest hot spring town in Japan by most reckonings. In 1707 a great earthquake stopped the springs. Prayers were offered at the shrine, and the water came back. For three hundred years and more, on this day, a rite of thanks called yu-kito has been performed at the same spot. The Dogo Onsen Festival grows out of that.

It runs three days. Rice cakes are thrown to the crowd from the upper floor of the Honkan bathhouse; women carry portable shrines through the shopping arcade; longevity mochi is pounded in the little park by the footbath. School brass bands play. Folk performers take the stage. There is a street market by day and the Dogo dance by night.

It is called a festival, but at its centre is an act of gratitude — a town that knows the water can stop, saying thank you once a year in case it should ever forget.

They say it brings spring to Dogo. Warmth returns to a town made of steam.